Service Volunteered for All (SERVOL) is a youth training and empowerment program established in the 1970’s in Beetham Estate in Laventille, one of the most depressed and crime-ridden areas, less than a mile from Port of Spain.
SERVOL seeks to address:

(1) Breakdown in Family Life;
(2) Criminal Tendencies;
(3) Lack of Education and Training;
(4) Employment Opportunities.

Its objectives are to:

-	Work for the underprivileged to get the underprivileged to work for themselves, to help them formulate realizable goals instead of sitting around and idly being pulled into “a life of crime”;
-	Focus on the self-development of people, and be “a small but important catalyst for change”;
-	Continuously search for new models of development which are capable of being taken up by bigger organisations to be implemented on a larger scale”.

Their approach is underpinned by:

-	A philosophy of ignorance, never to presume that one is aware of how it is for others;
-	To engage in attentive listening before advising;
-	Respectful intervention.

Some of the programs include:

The Youth Training Centre (YTC):
	initiated at the request of the Commissioner of Prisons, is conducted in partnership with a juvenile home for convicted youths 16 to 18 years old. SERVOL trains Prison officers of the YTC in the Adolescent Development Programme (ADP) to prepare them to work alongside SERVOL instructors in delivering the ADP for young people in the prison.
Rebirth House:
	helps recovering addicts at the Rebirth House, a drug rehabilitation centre are exposed to the ADP, which has been “successful in helping the addicts switch from a life of crime to a functional life.”
The Secondary School Transfer Programme:
	Delinquent students from “high risk” secondary schools are put into the ADP at SERVOL “in order to change their habits and attitudes.” At the end of the programme, students are given the choice to continue skills training at SERVOL or to return to their original school. SERVOL has so far provided this programme to over five hundred and eighteen (518) students who have successfully gone on to continue skills training at SERVOL, the alternative to the formal education system.
Contact Details Contact person: Professor Ramesh Deosaran, Director for Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCCJ), University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus. Telephone: 1 (868) 645-3232 ext 3352, 3355 Fax: 1 (868) 645-1020 Email: rdeosaran@fss.uwi.tt